MOM’S THE WORD: (From top) Karishma with Babita, Shilpa with Sunanda, Aishwarya with Vrinda, and Esha with Hema

Guess who was behind Kareena Kapoor dropping out of Kaho Naa Pyar Hai? None other than her mother Babita. She decreed that her daughter — then a newcomer in Bollywood — would, under no circumstances, appear in a bikini in the film. So Kareena opted out of a movie that went on to become a smash hit and launched the career of both Hrithik Roshan and her replacement, Amisha Patel.

Not the best of decisions on the part of Babita, perhaps. But in Bollywood, mothers are known to take a hard line where their star daughters’ careers are concerned. In the rest of the world, the phrase “celebrity mom” may refer to those gorgeous women who are tasting the joys of motherhood — Anjelina Jolie, Britney Spears, Gwyneth Paltrow, Uma Thurman and the like — but in Bollywood, it means one thing and one thing alone — mothers who are fiercely protective of their star daughters. Part career planner, part duenna, part media manager, these portly celebrity moms pull a lot of weight — and call the shots in their svelte daughters’ lives.

As Sunanda Shetty, mother of Shilpa Shetty, is doing so famously right now. Ever since Shilpa came to be at the centre of a race row in the UK reality show Celebrity Big Bother, Sunanda has shown just how central she is to her daughter’s career moves. As Shilpa looked likely to win the contest and ratchet up her star value many times over, Sunanda flew to London to renegotiate her daughter’s contracts, sacked her existing agent, and appointed Max Clifford, UK’s best-known celebrity publicist, to represent her. The bitter ex-agent, Jazz Barton, is said to have remarked that Shilpa’s mother “is out to milk the race controversy for all she can get”.

And this is not the first time that Sunanda Shetty has aggressively pursued her daughter’s interests. Some years ago, she allegedly took the help of the mafia to threaten the owner of a saree company who owed Shilpa a few lakhs for a modelling job she did for the brand.

Sunanda is quite unabashed about the key role she plays in her daughter’s life and career. “When Shilpa was new to the film industry I would go with her to the sets of her films. But then she learnt to handle everything so well that I stopped accompanying her to her shoots,” she says.

Chaperoning the star daughter to shoots really comes with the territory of being a celebrity mom. While a young man is considered to be well able to take care of himself in the big bad world of Bollywood, a young woman is perceived to be “at risk” and in need of protection. And who better to protect them than their mothers? Some are pushy and interfereing, some are quiet and unobtrusive, but nearly all of them keep a watchful eye on their daughters on the sets. Amisha Patel’s mother Asha used to be such a regular on the sets of Kaho Naa Pyar Hai that to cut staff strength on a New Zealand shoot of the film, Rakesh Roshan cast her as Hrithik’s mother!

Aruna Mookhey, mother of former Miss World Yukta Mookhey, recounts the problems her daughter faced while shooting for her debut film Pyaasa. “If I had not been there, I wonder how the producer, Ramesh Sharma, would have treated my daughter. These are very dangerous people. I had to be with her on the sets all the time,” she says.

With so many celebrity moms around, filmmakers have learnt to put up with them. Says Mahesh Bhatt, “Bollywood mothers are a necessary evil. Many of them are over-protective and often overreact to situations and make unnecessary demands.”

But that’s clearly not the way celebrity moms look at things. They are around not just to stave off the odd indecent proposal (Bollywood grapevine tells of one particular super-protective celebrity mom who clambered onto the casting couch herself to spare her daughter), but also to keep a stern eye on any “unworthy” relationships the daughter may be getting into. Babita, a power celebrity mom if there ever was one, reportedly got daughter Karishma out of a relationship with Ajay Devgan because he was also seeing Kajol at that time.

Hema Malini too has played the heavy-handed mother occasionally. For example, she did all she could do scuttle the budding romance between daughter Esha Deol and actor Aftab Shivdasani. That’s because she felt that Aftab’s career was going nowhere. In fact, she was so anxious to protect Esha from him that she made several surprise visits to the sets of Koi Mere Dil Se Poochhe, a film where the two were working together.

That ought to have left Hema with a strong sense of déjà vu. For many years ago, her own mother Jaya Chakravarthy — who was known to be a terror and used to accompany her on each and every shoot — did her best to stop Hema from carrying on her relationship with an already married Dharmendra.

Of course, not all celebrity moms are quite so over-bearing. Rani Mukherjee’s mother is never seen on the sets. Nor is Preity Zinta’s. Vrinda Rai, Aishwarya Rai’s mother also believes in being behind the scenes rather than up front and free with her sound bytes. And Madhuri Dixit’s mother Snehalata, though she used to be a fixture at all her daughter’s shoots, took care never to throw her weight around. Says choreographer Bhushan Lakandri, “Of all the heroines I have worked with, Madhuri Dixit’s mother Snehalataji is the most professional. She used to come to the sets but never said a word. She just sat there and watched and did not interfere. Most others interfere in the scenes as well.”

However, Hema Malini, a celebrity mom who is a mega Bollywood celebrity herself, feels that it is natural for mothers to hover around their star daughters. “The pressures are so high today. Every film release has become a matter of life and death because of the competition. And then the clothes — they’re getting smaller and smaller. Even though Esha does these dances and other scenes, she is very uncomfortable wearing such clothes. One needs to be around to guide the kids from time to time,” says Hema.

Do we hear a chorus of approval from Sunanda Shetty and her tribe?